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Recent Progress in Yoder Studies

It has been a while since I’ve blogged, but a lot has been happening in my work in Yoder studies. Here is an update and as a bonus I’ve included a neat quote I came across today.

First, we are wrapping up phase one of the Yoder Index. This means that within a week or so, each of Yoder’s books will be painstakingly indexed and available for your searching pleasure.

Second, the completion of phase one of the Yoder Index means that phase two has begun. Phase two entails indexing all of Yoder’s published articles as well as any new books that continue to be released. For instance, we are now working on indexing Radical Christian Discipleship, which was released after we capped our phase one book list. Soon IVP Academic will be publishing another book by Yoder called Theology of Missions.

Third, just today we submitted to Herald Press volume two of the “Yoder’s Challenge to the Church” series. This is a three volume series making available Yoder’s easiest to read material for a wide audience. Radical Christian Discipleship, which has sold more copies than anything else I’ve published, was volume one. Volume two is titled Revolutionary Christian Citizenship.

This new volume is pretty sweet. It focuses on how Christian should live as citizens of heaven and residents of ordinary nations. It is "revolutionary" because believers to not allow the state to muzzle them but boldly live out and proclaim their Christian convictions whether the wider citizenry approves of us or not. It has potential to become the non-academic go to text for thinking through church-state relations. I haven’t received an official publication date, but I suspect this volume should be available no sooner than this summer and no later than this fall. I can’t wait!

I will leave you with a tantalizing morsel from Radical Christian Discipleship that grabbed my attention today: "Worldliness is not a special sort of depravity. It is the normal behavior of worldly people. It is any thought or behavior whose first concern is not God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness. And since worldly people can be quite respectable, there are also respectable forms of worldliness . . . It is a pleasant form of recreation and food for self-righteousness to meditate on other people's sins. Thinkng about how much other people spend for cosmetics, alcohol, tobacco, and amusements creates a happy feeling in the breast of those who spend just as much for unnecessarily new automobiles, household appliances, vacationing, and bank accounts. Before the judgment of Christ, the fact that one sort of worldliness is more respectable than another seems to make little difference" (59...64).